Paper mill

Sunday

Jul 10, 2011 at 1:01 AM

The state’s new regulations for the evaluation of educators sound some of the right notes, but a revision of rules cannot by itself improve classroom performance.

The regulations, approved by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on June 28, aim to “establish a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation process for teachers and administrators” so as to “assure effective teaching and administrative leadership” in the state’s public schools.

That’s fair enough as an overall goal. And the regulations do get it right on several major points: They establish that MCAS test results will play some role in teacher evaluations; they state that student and teacher feedback are to be included in the evaluation process, eventually; and they allow for the inclusion of existing measures of progress at individual schools or in districts.

But those points don’t arrive until three-quarters of the way through a 20-page thicket of definitions, standards and indicators, most of which are painfully obvious, vaguely phrased, repetitive, or offer little specific guidance to educators. And the regulations never state exactly how much weight MCAS will have, exactly how teacher and student feedback will be factored into evaluations, and who is to decide whether a district or school’s existing evaluation process is good enough.

We do learn that educators should align curriculum with state frameworks, that they should engage in “culturally proficient communication” with families, that they should value diversity, manage conflict, “consider all relevant information,” and much more.

In fact, the regulations lay out 16 “indicators” for teacher standards in the areas of Curriculum and Planning, Teaching All Students, Family and Community Engagement, and Professional Culture. There are 20 such “indicators” for administrators, reaching into every conceivable area of day-to-day school management.

From their performance on these many indicators, educators are to be classified and graded, assigned one of four overall ratings — Exemplary, Proficient, Needs Improvement, or Unsatisfactory — and then placed on an action plan, or, in the case of competent educators, largely left alone.

It isn’t clear to us how any of this will help districts rid themselves of bad teachers any more quickly, ensure such teachers aren’t passed around within or between systems, or, on the positive side, facilitate the recruitment, promotion and rewarding of excellent teachers.

We were hoping for a far more succinct, specific and clear set of expectations that would promote accountability and excellence. Instead, by virtue of their length, complexity and open-ended language, these new educator evaluation regulations strike us as an excellent way to create more work and worry for administrators and teachers, while ensuring plenty of new grist for the wheels of bureaucracy that revolve at the state Department of Education.

If it were up to us, we’d declare these new regulations “unsatisfactory,” take an eraser to the whole blackboard, and start over.

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